When you bring in an independent technical drafter, you are essentially outsourcing a clearly defined part of the work. The design, the engineering and the contact with the end client stay in-house. What goes out is the detailing work: revisions to existing DWGs, drawing up variants, converting as-built material and modelling components that keep coming back.
OutsourceCAD is set up for exactly that division. We draft and model; we do not do engineering, calculations or structural advice.
The work is carried out entirely remotely from our own office, in our own environment and with our own licences, according to the drawing conventions you give us. We deliver 2D drafting and, where needed, 3D modelling, as-built drawings and revisions, usually in high volumes and with plenty of repetition. Nobody on our team has less than ten years of CAD experience. We respond to a new request within 1 to 2 working days, followed by a conversation in which we go through the project and the documents supplied.
Cable tray routing in the model, built with parametric families that carry the material schedule with them.
What an independent technical drafter needs to get started
The process starts with a conversation in which we go through what is there and what needs to be finished. After that, what you supply determines the pace. We need the existing files, your drawing conventions and standard, clarity about the software version the work should come back in and an idea of the order in which it should be delivered. In practice you supply the details, and it usually concerns existing drawings that need a revision. We start as soon as we have enough information. If something is missing, we work out as much as possible ourselves before getting in touch, because sending a string of questions back to a team that is already short of time does not help.
We respond to a request within 1 to 2 working days, after which the conversation follows. A short assignment is possible, and we can also begin with a small first assignment so the speed and accuracy of our work can be judged in practice first. That first assignment has a second purpose, because it also shows us how the supplied set is put together and where the points of attention lie.
Files go back and forth by email, and on larger projects we work with software you can log in to and follow the project. There is a fixed point of contact from day one, so no time is lost looking for the right person. Barry, our project manager, picks up the new request, and as soon as it becomes technical Sam, our team leader, takes over, which keeps the line short. How quickly the first work gets going therefore depends mainly on how complete your delivery is, and much less on our own staffing.
Which companies benefit from an independent technical drafter
Our clients are engineering consultancies, architectural practices, contractors and manufacturers, and more broadly any company with technical drafting work. The people at the table are managers, team leaders and owners, in other words people who guard the schedule and see where it gets stuck. The reason is almost always the same. Too few hours, too few drafters, or a peak the in-house team cannot get through. At an architectural practice this often shows in the detailed design phase, where the detailing piles up while the experienced people are working on the next enquiry.
At a manufacturer it is more about variants, where the same product has to be redrawn in a different size and the drawing office stays stuck on it week after week. Contractors mainly come to us with as-built files that still need processing after handover. A vacancy that cannot be filled cuts right across all of this. Recruitment takes months and a peak lasts weeks, so the gap remains while delivery still has to happen. Our clients are based in the Netherlands and that is where our attention lies too.
This service came about last year because a client asked for it, after which we made it a permanent part of what we offer. For Firefly we have now completed more than twenty projects and hundreds of drawings, including as-built material that had been printed incorrectly and partly drawn by hand. Work like that shows where the shoe pinches, because internally it takes a disproportionate amount of time from people who really should be working on something else. What these companies have in common is that drafting is not their core problem, but it is the item holding up the schedule.
No ongoing payroll costs and no idle staff once the peak is over. If one of our people is off sick or on holiday, we replace them and the work simply carries on.
Which drafting work we take off your hands and what we deliver
The output is more concrete than the search term suggests. We deliver 2D drafting, which covers floor plans, sections, elevations, details and schematic drawings that fit within the existing set. Where needed, we also do 3D modelling, as-built drawings and full revision rounds on files already in circulation. With revision work we pay close attention to what changes compared with the previous version, because in practice that is where most confusion arises. In Revit we also build parametric families, in other words smart components that adapt to a different size or situation. The component is built once and can then be placed in a single action, while the material schedule updates automatically with any change. Our main software is Revit, AutoCAD and Rhino, supplemented by Inventor and Grasshopper and, to a limited extent, Dynamo and Vault. We always work with the latest versions.
Delivery is in DXF, DWG, Revit formats and STEP files, and in practice in any common CAD format used within the project. We deliver in stages so adjustments can be made early, rather than discovering only at the end that the structure deviates. The intellectual property of everything we create belongs to you, including the source files and families. What falls outside our scope is calculations, structural advice and permits, and we deliberately keep that boundary clear. In greenhouse construction we can see clearly where the time savings are, because in AutoCAD a valve in 90 and in 110 is drawn by hand every time, whereas a smart family is placed in a single action. In that kind of work it saves at least seventy percent of the time, and that difference counts above all in long series.
From one independent technical drafter to a team that handles the volume
The request often starts with one person and turns out to be bigger after a conversation. Our large, variable team scales with each project, from one drafter for a small job to as many drafters as a large project requires. That means a set that would take one drafter months can be divided among several people working to the same agreements. That division is exactly where things often go wrong with individual contractors, because every external drafter brings their own habits.
With us, Sam rolls out your standard and makes sure the work stays uniform. With more than fifteen years of background in architecture, he worked in Iran for seven years, ran his own design practice in the Netherlands and is still an engineer.
The team is already in place, so when something is urgent we add people immediately without a recruitment round. We cover absences ourselves. If someone is ill or on holiday, we bring in another team member who continues with the same files and the same agreements, so the schedule does not slip. You pay no ongoing salary costs and there are no prepaid hour bundles or monthly hours subscriptions. When things quieten down, we take people off the project.
Because we work in our own environment with our own licences, scaling up costs no extra workstations and no extra access to internal systems. How many people make sense depends on the size of the set and the date by which it must be finished. With a steady flow of work we deliberately keep the staffing small, because a large group on a small set costs more in coordination than it saves in time.
Frequently asked questions about an independent technical drafter
Hand your detailing work over to us
Send us your documents and drawing conventions and we will let you know within one to two working days what we can take on and when.